Governor Ron DeSantis has signed two mental health-related bills into law Wednesday with the goal of improving mental health care throughout the state.
One of the laws will require the Florida Department of Education to review how telehealth might be used to increase access to school-based mental health services in underserved and rural schools.
The review must assess any challenges districts might face when adopting telehealth and provide recommendations for implementing telehealth in schools.
DeSantis said that making sure all kids have access to the care they need changes the game when it comes to mental health outcomes.
“This helps build a system to try to prevent the worst crises from occurring in the first place. And a lot of times when you have really serious crises, there's a buildup to that, that if you did have some support earlier on, probably could have been avoided,” said DeSantis.
The governor also signed into law the Tristin Murphy Act, which will streamline the process of getting nonviolent offenders with serious mental illnesses the mental health treatment they need.
The law is named after Tristin Murphy, a 37-year-old Floridian who died by suicide while imprisoned over minor charges. Murphy had schizophrenia and was denied mental health treatment and medication in the weeks leading up to his death.
DeSantis said sometimes the best course of response is treatment, not incarceration, especially when mental illness is a factor.
“So under this bill, counties and municipalities are going to be able to establish misdemeanor mental health programs as well as pretrial felony programs so that if people are in the justice system, and they have these really, particularly, really significant mental health afflictions, that we don't think that somehow just putting them in jail is going to fix those problems,” said DeSantis.
Watch the governor's full press conference here:
Governor DeSantis Signs Legislation to Promote Mental Health and Addiction Recovery https://t.co/YszhKx4EKr
— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) June 25, 2025
And the governor announced the creation of the Senator Darryl E. Rouson Center for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Research at the University of South Florida.
The center is named after Florida state Sen. Darryl Rouson, who overcame his own addiction and has campaigned for better services for others struggling with addiction. It will identify best practices for the treatment of substance use disorder and mental illnesses.
In its latest “State of Florida Behavioral Health Gap Analysis Report,” the Florida Department of Children and Families found that 400,000 children and youth struggled with emotional, behavioral and developmental issues in the last year.
Almost 35% of young people in the state had contemplated suicide in the last twelve months.
Overall, 5% of the state’s civilian population (i.e. non-veteran population), were identified as having a serious mental illness, and 15% struggled with substance use disorder in the last year.
Finally, despite these challenges, 98.5% of Florida counties had a shortage or complete lack of mental health care providers in the community, which is why school and criminal justice based-mental health services are so crucial.
Despite this need for care, Floridians are among the nation’s least frequent users of the 988 Lifeline number according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Read the DCF’s full report on the state’s outlook on mental health here:
